


Trip Wire/Horizon

by leslielol



Series: Into the Night’s Mouth [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Mando learns to be a dad, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22152184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: The Mandalorian lies awake, kept alert by the unrelenting danger of unfinished plans.He takes the time convalescing affords him to think about all he has done, and what little to which it amounts.Post-Chapter 6: The Prisoner / Post-Chapter 8: Redemption
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Into the Night’s Mouth [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1594465
Comments: 12
Kudos: 118





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm intending this fic to take place as a kind of before/after the events of the end of Season 1. We've got a long wait until Season 2, so maybe it'll branch off into its own adventure. 
> 
> This work is vaguely connected to my other Mandalorian fic "Soup/Verdure," if only for the ration-bead thing. 
> 
> FYI this fandom is wholeheartedly delightful.
> 
> EDITED TO ADD: I'm ending this at chapter 2 because I 100% did not work on this between seasons 1 and 2, and now SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED. :o

Ran’s base lights up behind him. The Mandalorian doesn’t stick around to take in the whole fiery view; he knows anyone in an X-wing isn’t looking for conversation, and even for the fall of the Empire, they’re rightfully still jumpy around any ship with so much as a blaster taped to the hull. 

The Mandalorian lands on the day's first seasoned decision, and makes a clean getaway. 

He can say as much about fleeing Ran and the X-wings: nothing more than a glimmer of debris comes within a parsec of his ship. The narrow escape from Ran’s _crew,_ however, is an entirely different matter. They got too close for comfort more than once--as the knife wounds to his side, the various contusions, and likely internal bleeding can all attest. 

They were brutal. As far as Ran's tastes went, that much had not changed. 

Though, with the Mandalorian's exist, efficiency was scarce. 

He supposes he ought to count his blessings that Ran had filled his space with more cruelty than sense. Though, being dead instead of beaten has its upsides: he wouldn't feel _flatter than hammered shit,_ as Ran liked to say.*

For as much as he is known for his Mandalorian armor, he feels very distinctly the form inside it: the flesh and bone that sustain regular abrasions and breaks, the parts of him that are perishable. He feels like putty, with only his man-shaped armor keeping up upright and visibly human. 

They drop from lightspeed and idle in blackest, emptiest space. 

The first free breath the Mandalorian takes is grated over what feels like his ribs cutting across his lungs: it sings like a dying bantha. 

He tries breathing deeper, digging in under the pain, delving into that place he always secures a second wind--but he comes up shockingly empty. He struggles--outwardly, even--and is slow to collect himself. 

He knows the child is watching, and that alone inspires him not to suffer so plainly. It is less a thing belonging to his kind or his creed--at least, not in the sense that he is a Mandalorian. He feels this impulse differently; it is not adopted, not assumed, but… inspired. There is a baseless impulse here to show no weakness and carry himself above the fray they’ve only just escaped. 

This, and nothing less, lest the child fret.

It's quickly a thing the Mandalorian learns he needn't concern himself with. Of his own volition, the child climbs down from his place in the second chair, and waddles purposefully out of the cockpit. Over his own wheezing breath, the Mandalorian listens and places the child within the ship. He hears him approach the hidden cupboard, unlock the latch, and gather his blanket. 

Usually the Mandalorian retrieves it--a quiet signal that they're on the move again, which puts them both due in the cockpit of the Razorcrest--but the child has seemingly intuited his caregiver's bodily distress, and hustled off to do the deed himself. 

He returns with his blanket dragging far behind him, as well as a bead-sized ration clutched in one small palm. He opens it before the Mandalorian, warmed now and soft, but no less imbued with intention. 

"Thanks," the Mandalorian says. He accepts the ration and is glad the child cannot see him wincing as he stands.

The child reaches for him--eyes narrowing to a close and one clawed hand poking up from his overly-long sleeve. 

The Mandalorian picks him up and puts him in the second chair. He does this without betraying the ache overtaking him, and thinks mildly that the pain has subsided a little for his willing it to do so.

He offers a weary, “You’re in command,” while leaving the child at the console. He’s learned well enough what not to touch, and barring his forgetting--the Mandalorian has installed a few safety protocols to ensure his capacity for irreparable damage is limited. 

His ship suddenly feels as long and drawn as the prison transport, and each step he makes is countered by the unwillingness of his body to go further than he can manage to return. It's a grueling journey to his minimal quarters, but once secure there, the Mandalorian removes his helmet. The air stings his face, a tell-tale sign parts of it are split open and leaking. He wets his lips and tastes the deep, natural warmth of his own flesh. 

He could polish a bit of the hull and catch a glimpse, maybe take a more definitive look--but he doesn’t.

Won’t.

He finds a clean bit of rag, then rolls the hydration ration between his still-gloved fingers until it bursts. He catches the liquid in the rag, then presses it to his face--washing, but not really. Blood from a split lip and busted cheek saturates into the fibers, blotting across the fabric like a string of kisses. The Mandalorian draws it back, takes in the pretty pink smears, and guesses at the arrangement of his face. 

He doesn’t need to see it to know every feature is swollen and starting to bruise. Wearing the helmet has long-since deafened his own curiosity. He can tell no teeth have been lost and his nose still aligns, and that more-or-less satisfies his needs.

He listens to his quiet, drifting ship. The silence affords him a new kind of cover, so he strips himself of those closer comforts. In the confined space of his quarters, he reveals skin that has scarcely seen the light of neither sun nor star. The pieces come away in silent practice: the heavier slabs of armor, his cowl, his gloves. The rest--nearer pieces to identify his form and function--peel slowly away.

He looks about his form, washes the worrisome patches, picks at dried blood and inspects his slapdash efforts to piece himself back together. 

He stands bare and contemplative of himself--not seeing, but feeling his nakedness. To experience anything but his own armor against his skin is more a curiosity than not. He presses his hands to his body, searching out new wounds, and taking stock on how the old ones are healing up. He takes a tally of those parts of him excused by battle, bits of absent flesh replaced now by raised scar tissue. He feels as though he's peeled one too many layers back, and wonders how his undoing can ever be undone. 

Just breathing is different: he is so used to taking life from a slot in the wall he makes of himself, so have it engulf him from all sides, to surround him, is overwhelming.

His skin prickles of its own volition. Everything that amounts to his being is telling him it is wrong to be this exposed, to return so fully into the natural body he abandoned. He feels as though he has been worked out of himself by a greater being and not merely his own hands unfastening, lifting, and uncovering himself. It is as though he is still watching with lidless eyes at a deconstructed form amass itself--the birth of birth itself. Parts are still wanting to glom on, to fortify what _should **be.**_

He knows it's nothing so involved.

He is a man who has made a lifetime of choices. And before him, there is a lifetime more, prickling and humming, endlessly abuzz in a world of his own making, awaiting to be turned this way or that. 

He can return to what he's always been, if he so chooses.

So naturally it terrifies him how little he's come, how quickly he can undo it all. 

But such is the Way: every choice is one of great consequence. Existence itself is a proclamation, and nothing from it is guaranteed. 

The Mandalorian spits another glob of blood into the toilet, wipes his face again, sighs, dresses, and dons his helmet. 

He remakes himself. 

Returning to the cockpit, he sees the child has encased himself in his blanket and made a comfortable cocoon in the second chair. The distinct lack of a myriad of blinking lights and sirens suggest he hasn’t gotten into anything.

It seems they’ve both got a surprisingly noble grip on their curiosities. 

The Mandalorian drops into his chair and immediately regrets doing so. He sits arched, all but whinging in pain, and making not a noise until he relents just a moment and lets break a gasp. 

He aches--everywhere. 

His chest, from where his Beskar armor deflects blaster shots but doesn’t absorb them. 

His legs, arms, back, and wherever else Burg saw fit to distribute punishment. 

His head--and not just due to Burg’s using it like a hammer against the controls of the prison transport ship, but for all the clenching of his jaw around Ran’s new team, eager as they all were to strip him of his helmet, ship, and life. 

If he was a more sentimental species, he’d say it was the betrayal that hurt worst of all. 

_He_ isn’t. _It_ doesn’t. 

The pain he feels isn't special; reverberating between bone and steel is a run-of-the-mill ache that never feels sated by sleep, appeased by care, or dissolved by treatment. 

He’s _tired,_ which is less a thing about the work than the company it attracts. Whether it's credit, acclaim, or revenge--people want too much and do untold damage trying to squeeze it from the blood of others. 

He supposes it’s a rich sentiment coming from a former Guild member, but he chalks it up to a few weeks’ worth of hindsight.

This job, the last, and the smattering of those in between, the places he goes because a beacon is shot into space with a cry for help and the whisper of payment--they've taken a considerable toll. It's only since taking a breath that it all catches up to him. 

The Mandalorian lurches forward, languishing now over his console, and plots an aimless course. It's something slow and safe, darting and far. The black emptiness of space overtakes them as they speed away from the light of planets and stars alike. Life, too, is put at a distance.

Soon, all life seems contained to the space of the cockpit. It is split between the Mandalorian’s own wheezing and the child’s contemplative silence. It neither grows nor wilts; it maintains. 

In short order, he realizes he cannot keep this up.

Sitting upright, that is. 

Pathetically, he knows he needs to rest, to stuff himself full of medicinal sprays, recline his body, and simply give it time to heal itself. 

He looks at his course and shuffles through the nearest planets, searching for desolation and quiet. 

He decides on a moon. 

It's a blackened landscape that looks to be made of flat shale rock, though he doesn't step outside his craft to confirm this. The child does not protest when they land, but venture no further than the small cot in the Mandalorian's quarters. Either the lack of greenery doesn't excite him, either, or he has somehow learned the concept of politeness despite his utter lack of a teacher. 

"I need…" the Mandalorian starts to explain himself, but again, the child makes his meaning, and joins him. 

That creeping awareness is at once too great not to suggest genuine comprehension, yet the Mandalorian has difficulty naming it as such. This is a child with impulses towards shiny objects and slimy frogs--where along that spectrum is there room for complex interpersonal intuition? 

Though, it can’t be by chance the child toddles in ahead of him, scrambles to gain purchase from one thin sheet, and sits directly atop the flattened pillow. 

Without breaking his stride, the Mandalorian all but folds the child into the pillow and deposits both onto the floor. 

“Take it. Eat it. I don’t care.” 

The Mandalorian lays flat on his back along the length of the cot. It's not especially comfortable to sleep with his helmet on, but he’s done it more than not. Regardless, he's not about to turn the child away when he's been so agreeable thus far. 

He takes a slow breath and tries not to let it undo him. He expels the ache and goes listlessly into trained silence, hoping peace is not stationed far behind.

His stuttering breaths even out, and his existence becomes what he imagines it to be: a smooth blip on a cold surface. A slick bit of hull, debris from any of the war’s various incursions and proxy battles, floating listlessly through space. It’s actually something of a rarity to come by--even for as many have been obliterated, there are an abundance of planets in close proximity, and gravitational pulls amid them and any litany of moons. Those pieces all find a place to unwittingly land. Billions are dead, but one wouldn’t guess it for those clear, clear skies. 

Thoughts of genocide do not lull the Mandalorian to sleep. He lies awake, kept alert by the unrelenting danger of unfinished plans. 

He takes the time convalescing affords him to think about all he has done, and what little to which it amounts. 

All that talk about the good old days with Ran makes him realize he’s been at this longer than not, and all those years of paying his dues among smugglers, criminals, and the Guild have bought him is _still more years_ of service--to this game, this ceaseless life of hunting prey with a fleeting reward. There’s prize enough only to keep going, and purpose is a further thing from him than the next burning star. 

He's never wondered if it's sustainable--he knows it's not. The work has only ever got him to the new job, the next unknown slice of space to charge through. That glimmer of the galaxy used to be enough for the boy who lost everything and the man who willfully let his identity fall away. Nothing was more assuring to him, strangely, than to see the millions of lives the Empire had scattered across the galaxy. 

Ruin and desperation made him run.

Ruin and desperation keep him coming back. 

They’re vices, of a kind. He visits them often.

He wonders, is the child enough to make him stop? Is he an excuse the Mandalorian would otherwise never give himself?

He considers the child, and if he's honest with himself, he has hardly made an effort. He's on the run, the child in tow. Besides some shared Beskar, rations, a bit of blanket, and a cubby, has he altered his existence at all to make room for this strange, small being? 

He’s been lucky to encounter as many kind and good-natured people as he has criminals and low-lifes. Kuiil, the Sorgan villagers, the mechanic--they warned after his brash and loose methods with respect to the child and its care. 

Because twice in as many days, the child has either been flung from a captor’s arms or purposefully dropped. Both instances were a direct result of the Mandalorian's own miscalculations: his leaving the child behind or stashing him away, not necessarily banking on luck, but scarcely planning for otherwise. 

And that’s not the worst of it: he very nearly lost his _ship._ The child’s intentioned safe haven, and the Mandalorian is aware of how much work _intentioned_ is doing for the sentiment.

If Mayfeld, Burg, or Xi'an had returned to the Razorcrest, claimed it as the price of doing business, any damage done to the ship would have been the least of the Mandalorian’s concerns. The child would have been found and then--

Tortured?

Sold? 

Killed by accident? 

Killed for sport?

Without thinking, the Mandalorian’s hand drifts off the cot and in search of the child. He finds the tip of one ear and the sloping crest of another. The child is where the Mandalorian plopped him down, and gnawing contentedly on a spare bit of rubber tubing. 

With precious care, the Mandalorian delves into that most quiet, intimate thing: doubt. 

He considers a life beyond bounty hunting, beyond the work he can do, and within that, beyond what the helmet allows him to cultivate and get away with. It’s both an image of himself and a mirror unto which others reflect their own guilt and fear. He is both the hunter, and the corner his bounties run themselves into trying to escape him. 

He considers, really, what all that is really worth.

He considers how easy it is to hunt and how impossible it’s been to hide.

He still believes the best he’s done was Sargon, or as good as, with the exception of causing such a stir downing an AT-ST and massacring raiders in noticeable scores. If he and Cara Dune had not rendered so many of them wet-hot smears on the forest floor, if they'd stealthily taken them out, stacked their bodies, and let the planet's mossy arms come up and take them deep into a hug, he'd be set. He'd be ready to take his helmet off and breathe new air. 

He considers how he'd do it, next time.

 _In phases._

No-- _all at once._

He’d trade the ship. Or crash it? Leave in something smaller, regardless. 

Worse, he’d have to part with the Beskar. 

Return it to the covert, if he could. He couldn't sell it, and wouldn’t want to--that much Beskar would raise suspicion, anyway. 

If he well and truly meant to disappear, he’d let it melt in the flames of a purposefully felled ship. 

He's a faceless man with the helmet. Taking it off makes him a nameless one. 

His gut response to the sum of those ideas is _No._

And more explicitly, _Fuck no._

He dissects the feeling, unravels it and stretches it out uncomfortably. He does to this thought what he can't with his body, and is underwhelmed with his findings: he simply doesn't want to. 

He counters, considers the fact that if he intends to protect the child, it may not matter that he’d prefer to continue his chosen path as a Mandalorian. If he’s accepted the creed, the impossible choice may yet be the only one. 

Given the ilk who are after the child and the firepower they have at their disposal, he could just as well end up a dead Mandalorian, honor and all.

In wider worlds, where stories of his kind have permeated and his physical self must stand against an imagined backdrop, he tends to battle wonder with oblivion. A blasé attitude cuts through intrigue faster than razor wire into the unprotected throat of a milling Stormtrooper. 

But there is no judgment here in his own ship. There are only his thoughts, and the wide ears of a child who won’t hear them. 

The helmet is only a novelty to others; it means something to him. He believes and trusts in what it represents. He reveres the community, its culture and purpose. They have become his own as he was nurtured from an orphan of war into something with some coherency and standing in the galaxy. He has less of a name now than before, but he surrendered it in exchange for a _title._

In hindsight, his standing with the Guild was easy enough to cast aside; they were competitors more than colleagues. The Mandalorians are his preferred and chosen kind, and among them are shared values and a mission, however long it may stretch past their own concurrent lives. More than what he could make from the meager choices of one man in a whole galaxy, the Mandalorian tribe is worth preserving. 

He draws his hand back and settles it empty at his side. He cannot yet say the child is worthier. 

On the creature's behalf, he knows he would fight--bitterly, relentlessly--but neither is in question. What the Mandalorian cannot yet fathom is, would he give up? 

Is his very existence--everything he knows and is known by--a thing he can step out and away from, and not inevitably lose all that he associates with it? Perhaps he is as ruthless as a man--but is he as willful? As honorable? 

Is he brave enough to dare to find out? 

Perhaps it won't be his decision to make. He's run with other crews, and made his own enemies besides. If a half-dozen someones get the jump on him, he might not have to worry about anyone taking off his helmet. After he's strung up behind a speeder, it'll come off on its own, head still encased, much to the entertainment of some Jawas who will feed from it like an egg. 

And where will that leave the child? 

He tries to sit up and finds the effort is more than he can muster.

 _Something’s wrong,_ he thinks, almost manic, before he accepts he knew as much before, which is why he decided to lay down. 

_You’re hurt,_ he reminds himself.

_Just hurt._

He was lying.

The ache that won't leave him isn't physical. He is marred with indecision for two unsustainable choices. He repeats them, balling up his fists as he counts them off. _This_ or _that._

Does he continue running, and eventually run out of luck? Or does he start hiding, abandoning the life he's assumed? And will this sacrifice matter for a child of fifty, who is still no less an infant? 

His hands fall open again, undecided. He hasn’t the strength yet to concede to a plan. 

He wrests himself out of uncertainty and commits himself--at least--to the silent and fortifying work of deciding. He feels his pulse throb between his ears, hears the metallic echo that has accompanied it longer than not. 

It's not a sign of weakness, he reminds himself, to know when he's stuck.

He knows the only means of lessening his troubles is to reach out for a singular kind of help.

He’ll go to the Mandalorian enclave--after finding where it’s been relocated, of course. He’ll explain what he’s done (the _why_ of it all still evades him), accept their rightful criticism of his willful negligence, and ask for their guidance.

He considers the possible outcomes of that conversation:

They agree to help, in due part to someone having or acquiring information for him to act on.

They agree to help, and take the child on as a foundling. They’ll keep him safe in the underground tunnels, so at least if hunters are drawn to the planet, they won’t find him so quickly.

They refuse.

And if they refuse, the Mandalorian decides, there will be no other choice than to help himself. 

He will thank them all the same, remove his helmet, and leave an unknown man. He’ll take twice over what they have afforded him just the once: anonymity. The total and profound ability to hide in plain sight.

His Beskar armor will be returned to the covert and distributed among others; at least in this way, he will repay the tribe for their care and protection. 

And perhaps he and the child will make enough of an escape--fly far enough and journey long enough that none will follow. There are worlds yet untouched by war--a generally heartfelt sentiment by those who've suffered immeasurably, though the Mandalorian knows it by sheer odds. There must be entire planets in the galaxy whose inhabitants have never known any more ruin than they've sown for themselves, where no outsider has come to conquer, no hunter in search of a score. 

And as such, there are vast means by which the child can live, and the Mandalorian with it, building and growing into existence ways enough for the creature to survive after he's gone.

If he did not want at least that, he would have never given the child a second thought. He would have walked away with a square deal for his Beskar prize. He would be the envy of the entire Guild--still!--and have credits enough for a life of adventure. 

His only genuine blunder, then, is a warped conception of survival. He didn't foresee beyond what was first, what was real. Literal survival meant stealing the child from his captors, and escaping Nevarro with their lives. 

His own narrowly-averted extinction event felt less complicated in hindsight, though he has to admit: joining an aged order of religious warriors does not clock as inherently _un_ complicated. 

Abandoning the child was an impossibility. Taking him felt right.

That's where his argument to the Mandalorian covert will begin and end. He is certain even if they don't approve, they will understand. 

He goes to sleep--finally--imagining. 

-

He sleeps off-and-on for three days. 

When he awakes and surveys his ship, he finds the child has only taken every shiny knob from his console, and displayed them in a pile at the foot of the Mandalorian's cot. He's also spilled a container of rations, as well as removed every shiny green-colored ration from the horde. It appears he was more bored than aggravated with the break in action, adventure, and attention--however unwittingly he is party to any of those things.

That thought stops the Mandalorian mid-way over the bed. 

Above him, he can hear a steady metal clanging and lolling that suggests something is being rolled across the floor of his ship. 

The child, he suspects-- _in this instance as in most_ \--is having a pleasant enough time.

The Mandalorian is able to sit up and stand, and though he's initially stiff in his movements, he finds himself the most welcomed guest in his own cockpit. The child has assumed the lead chair, but cries out and scrambles happily off when the Mandalorian approaches. 

"You take her for any joy rides?"

The child continues to babble incoherently.

“Don’t lie, I’ll know if you did.” 

He feels as though he should say more--an absurdly meaningless prospect, given the child will not engage in conversation. Nonetheless, another apology is owed, or explicit thanks. 

The Mandalorian finds a halfway-point he thinks brings both points in jovial meeting: he doesn’t bother screwing all the loose lever knobs back on before warming the ship and disappearing back into the vastness of space. 

It’s there his muscles settle back along his bones, and the armor fits like a second skin, and he feels a little more like himself. 

-

He chances a stop at an outpost. It's holed away on some too-bright planet, where the triple suns look like explosions caught in the red-lined sky. He refules his ship, then trades credits for some dried meats and vegetables, as well as a heavy stew he is able to purchase in the commendable size of a Tauntaun’s feed container. 

It is met with much the same champion's welcome as he was, and the child has a good, hot meal aboard the Razorcrest. 

When he's finished, the Mandalorian produces another purchase--a set of carved wood pieces, one smooth as a ball but absent a middle, another forked with rounded-edged spikes, and the third made in such a way as to display the crest of a wave at both ends. As far as toys go, they're not particularly thrilling, but a lone Ugnaught was selling them outside the outpost proper, whittling each by hand, these polished pieces from discarded scraps. 

The Mandalorian had stopped and stared, and finally thought to commend the handiwork. The creature wasn't as proud as Kuiil, and said nothing for the stranger's compliment. 

The Mandalorian asked the price, and still no answer.

 _For a child,_ the Mandalorian tried, though he was ready for the next bout of silence to be agreed upon and left at that. 

_"Yours?"_

Curiosity won out. 

Whether the Ugnaught went the rest of his life wondering if Mandalorians procreate with their helmets on was of little concern; a price was set, the credits transferred, and the gift presented to the child, who cooed and cried out ecstatically for something undoubtedly, undeniably his own. 

He knows his earlier doubts were foolish, but the Mandalorian cannot deny the instinctive feeling he has now, that _this_ is the first thing he's done for the child. Not stealing him away from harm, not feeding and keeping him warm, only this: the provision of that which is not necessary, but delighted in. 

When they are ready to continue their journeying, the Mandalorian settles the child onto a pallet in the cockpit. The metal knob from the console joins the three new additions--that old, first favorite. 

(The Mandalorian, who is dutifully steering through a wave of asteroids, is not aware when the toys begin to float well above the child's head. He does not see the child's plump little claws seemingly orchestrate their bobbling movements like music.) 

The child is napping fitfully when the communication from Greef Karga is received. The Mandalorian listens to it twice, though just the once is needed--Karga tends to repeat himself when his mind catches up to the grandiose plans of his own making. 

It's a plea for help, but more than that--it's an out. 

_His out,_ as sure a way as any to fight again and maybe recover what he lost the last time his boots graced the planet's aired crust. 

Here’s another mission, something to throw his weight behind but, arguably, one from which he secures the greater prize: he gets what he wants without Karga or any others fully knowing to what it amounts.

The Mandalorian allows the message to play a third and final time.

He is not dazzled by Karga's showmanship--a holdover, surely, from his brief time as a magistrate. But the Mandalorian believes the man is genuine in looking to make a deal. 

He has a fine business on Nevarro playing king and kingmaker alike. His Guild members begrudgingly respect him, which, from such scum and villainy, Karga can willfully misconstrue as adoration. He desperately wants his high-rolling life back, and knows he can only secure it with an equal prize for the Mandalorian: anonymity. 

It’s what he _wants._

To the slumbering child, he says, “This might work.” 

He won’t realize until it’s too late his vices come in threes: ruin, desperation, and want.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :''''''') Thank you all for reading. 
> 
> This chapter takes place post- _Chapter 8: Redemption._ Spoilers throughout.

There’s a moment after Moff Gideon takes aim and explodes the E-Web’s generator--and very nearly the Mandalorian with it--when he thinks it’s over. 

There’s another, when he’s languishing on a slab of table in the burning cantina, that he knows it is.

He feels warmth and wetness in his hair, his neck, down his back. It seeps seemingly without end. There’s more of himself outside of himself than in. He lifts his head once and feels the parts separate, and realizes a second to late there are no _parts_ to a skull, just the lump sum. 

He sinks back, limbs suddenly heavy in defeat. 

He tells them over and over-- _Go._

He can’t bear to explain: _I’m coming apart._

He knows from broken bones and _having his bell rung._ He knows from fatal and not-quite, if he’s lucky. 

He knows leaning back and coming forward without the base of his skull, feeling it slope into and sink against his helmet, is not a thing that he can carry from point A to point B. 

He manages another _Go,_ and wrestles a promise from Cara Dune to protect the child, to mark it as his own with a thing more closely tied to him than his own name. He gives her his Mythosaur pendant, begs, and when she agrees, he chokes on and swallows a relieved sob. 

If the child has any hope in this world, it’s in her. 

Something else happens.

It’s unexplainable in every way except that the Mandalorian sees it plainly, grasps the interconnected threads of intent, purpose, and consequence. His brain is not yet so scrambled that he doesn't _understand._

The child means to protect them, and despite his small stature and lack of a weapon, somehow that is enough. By some invisible strength, his intentions are exercised in a world meant to be greater than him in every respect. 

He stalls and contains the fiery blast. He returns it forcefully to its sender. He does this incredible thing and falls back with a huff, as though merely winded. 

And the Mandalorian thinks, _He’ll be fine._

It's still a lie, generated by the same wild flame, but the Mandalorian basks in its warmth. 

Then, contrary to the blood leaving his body and the sense absent in his mind, contrary to his protestations and--maybe--a few quiet wants, he lives. 

A droid he’d once killed calls the Mandalorian’s bluff when he threatens to do it again. IG-11 fulfills his new purpose by administering becta spray and applying a sure and steady grip. The Mandalorian knows it is calibrated by circuitry in the android's refurbished system, but it feels--

It _is--_

Tender.

Which is why the Mandalorian doubts the presumption that the droid can look upon his face, that the deed undoes itself in real time. Viewing, but not seeing. Having no inherent capacity for tenderness, but actualizing the sentiment. 

The Mandalorian is literally held together by this being, having his pieces set, his parts mended. The Mandalorian doesn't want to think of the inherent role reversal, but there's nowhere else for his mind to go, unless he well and truly wants it to slide like jelly along the grooves of his helmet, and paint the floors of the ruined cantina. 

He sheds the inexplicable urge to cry as quickly as it hits, surprising him with its facets and depths. He watches the droid as he works, and a small voice inside him--a boy's voice--warns him this is not okay. 

But when death is averted, so too are his doubts. IG-11 returns the helmet to its proper place, unfazed by the entire exchange. And the Mandalorian thinks, perhaps that is what clears him: not just the lack of intrigue, but the show of respect. 

Most living things are uneasy towards that which is a conscious mystery. They feel affronted by the very idea. 

This droid--isn't. Doesn't. 

And the Mandalorian is spared in every way that counts.

-

The rest seems to miss him: the loss of his fellow Mandalorians, the veritable extinction of their covert, the ruin that allows his own meager cadre’s escape--these things confront him, slap him hard in the face, knock the air from his lungs, but none lay him out flat, not like the generator blast and brain damage. He goes from one to the next, passing through these tragedies with an intensity too hot to handle. Nothing touches him fully. If it gets close enough, it burns up in his atmosphere.

One could just as well as ask Moff Gideon how _that_ feels. 

When the dust settles and the child is in his care, the Mandalorian is stricken with another potentially devastating blow: time to think.

He doesn't keep a count, but walking away is what winning feels like. He knows his limits, and clocks just enough catastrophic losses to bid each step in retreat. That's his jumping off point. 

The Mandalorians were slaughtered, and he won. 

Kuiil and IG-11 were lost, and he won.

The result is as it always has been: he gets back into his ship, moving stiffly and absent more friends.

A winner.

When the Mandalorian and child land from what he considers his second-most successful ride with the Phoenix, he takes stock of himself; he doesn’t like the quake in his knees as his boots hit the planet’s surface. He supposes the pain _should_ be more profound. After the beating he took, sheer agony _should_ be radiating from his head and coursing through his body like heat spitting from the fiery tendrils of a collapsing star. 

_Wrong,_ he thinks.

He _should_ be dead.

But IG-11 was generous with the becta spray, so all the Mandalorian is feeling is the strange buzz of his body mending itself. 

He is still wary, and right to be so. No doubt Moff Gideon brought scores of Stormtroopers to his aid, stationing many across the outpost’s perimeter. With the child secured under a beskar plate drawn across his chest, the Mandalorian surveys the area. 

His helmet has features to allow him to see--through a feed--an expanded periphery. This technology further tracks sources of heat, machinery, and certain bio-chemical traces that prove prudent for bounty hunting. He observes more under the helmet than not, though that was not always the way. He came into these designs with age and training, and through them learned to see again.

But he can just as well flip a switch and view his surroundings through the coin of light that holes up, then distorts, in that t-shaped entry into the world. 

He does this when his scanners pick up not a cadre of Stormtroopers, but the felled form of Kuiil, lying still in the dirt, not far from the ship. 

His heart slows, and his lungs still themselves in quiet solidarity. The Mandalorian is stood in that liminal space where existence and escape are each indistinguishable from the other, except where one colors the experience with intention. 

He ventures towards the slain Ugnaught, child still secure in his arms. There is a distant question spinning its wheels in the back of his mind as to whether the child should view a friend in such a state. Perhaps it was a part to sustain damage, because the Manadalorian does not slow in his approach.

The body is stiff now, broken from where he'd been shot off his Blurrg. The beast must have survived; there is no carcass. 

Kuiil had nearly made it. 

The Mandalorian sets the child down. It is not death he means to teach by gruesome example, but sacrifice and respect. 

The child watches as the Mandalorian bears down into the planet’s surface and scratches out a place to lay their friend to rest. Kuiil goes into the earth, and the earth on top of him, and stone on top of that, until the little mound grows into a space of some station. The child, eventually understanding something tangential to the deed, if not the intent, takes a single rock in both his hands. He waddled to the base of the mound and adds it to the mound. 

The Mandalorian wants to speak over the grave, to offer thanks and praise, but everything coming to mind aligns itself with his own regrets, not the Ughnaught’s triumphs. He escaped slavery, built himself a quiet little life, practiced patience and kindness, and forged friendships with all kinds, even going to far as to create them, as in the case of IG-11. The Mandalorian knows these things to be true, but speaking them with the finality a gravesite presupposes is too much. He chokes on the effort.

He collects the child and together, they silently return to the Razorcrest.

He checks for troopers like he’s learned to check for Jawas. He sits at the console, gets up, checks again, returns. He runs his hands under the console, searching for trackers and explosives alike. 

He feels his success--however dimly framed and bloodsoaked--is immature. He worries about leaving the playing field too soon and forfeiting the game, but reminds himself Cara Dune and Greef Karga are no puny force, and should the scattered pieces rearrange themselves across the board, their shared cause won’t stand defenseless. 

He studies the child, this beguiling, bewildering green being, with an untenable power as fantastic as it is horrifying. He tries to conceptualize their new relationship, so-ordered by the Armorer. 

_Granted,_ the Mandalorian thinks, if he’s honest about those _wants_ he seems to keep ammassing.

Because what the Armorer said to him, he realizes, was precisely what he wanted to hear: confirmation that his every impulse towards the child was not madness, but instinct. 

Part of him feels triumphant in this. Another part thinks of his whole life without it. Each wants to interrogate the other, certain this synced questioning will illuminate which is not the wiser self.

Or maybe--probably--this has nothing to do with him.

The Mandalorian looks at the child and says what he was robbed of saying to Kuiil: “Thank you.”

He says, towards the child’s own accomplishments: “For what you did in the cantina.”

And, “Whatever you did.” 

He doesn’t quite understand it, even with the Armorer's explanation of _a race of wizards._ He can extrapolate and figure the Empire's desire for the child--all those whispered stories of those in command having terrible, unseen power were true, and suggest this is one of their kind.

But there is no inherent evil in this child--that much, the Mandalorian concludes without issue. His attack on Cara Dune was a misunderstanding, and everything else…

The Mandalorian realizes _he_ has been the inspiration for the child's feats. The danger and mercy he put himself at the feet of the Mudhorn, laid flat and dying before the red-striped Trooper bearing a flamethrower. Even Greef Karga wasn't as aggrieved as the Mandalorian when his arm had been sliced open--it was the Mandalorian who was furious, and frightened, and dreading the fact that their plan had come undone so quickly. 

The child, he now believes, was assuaging _his fears,_ not Karga's whinging. 

Perhaps as powerful an enemy these wizards had been towards the earlier Mandalorians, this child was an equally profound ally. 

The thought rests uneasy on the Mandalorian's heart as soon as it forms, heaves upwards, and escapes from his mind. This is still a creature he found locked in a steel bassinet, a thing ripped from his family and homeworld, a thing absent speech and apparent means of self-determination. Even with his abilities, any being who has had the desire to has thrust this child into a satchel.

He thinks about what the Armorer decreed in the haunted depths of the cover's tunnels: they are a clan of two. 

The Mandalorian wishes he could amend that, emphasize they are foundling-and-protector, that _clanship_ bears too heavy a burden: it suggests each has the same responsibility to care for and defend the other. The Mandalorian does not want that onerous task laid on the child--in due part, because now he cannot make the brash choices of a solitary being. 

Of course, the Armorer is wise and purposeful with her words. Perhaps she knows--somehow--the division of power isn't so one-sided. 

He realizes he hasn’t started his ship, only sat listlessly at the controls. 

There’s a thing he’s abandoned on Nevarro twice before, but cannot stand to leave again without trying--however hopelessly--to attain it. He turns to the child, consciously willing into being that which he has risked life and limb to acquire: answers.

"Do you know what you are?" 

It seems a strange--if not unfair--line of questioning. The child blinks its great, black eyes. The Mandalorian course corrects, adding, "Or did this happen?"

As he well knows an identity can be a thing of circumstance as well as necessity. 

He asks, "Are you different from those who raised you?" 

And, "Would they refuse you for this reason?" 

The child stares and betrays nothing. The Mandalorian won't be made to feel foolish for asking; he's been surprised before. Who is to say the child won't convey more to him now? _Specifically_ now, when their relationship to one another is squared away, impenetrable as a blood oath? 

The Mandalorian waits a moment, then a moment too long. Sheepishly, he starts his ship. Theirs is a quiet and steady departure, and he doesn’t glance back at the child until they’ve overtaken the planet’s atmosphere, and are swallowed comfortably by the blackness of space. 

He’s had the child in his company for months and yet still cannot yet fathom a breed such as this, let alone speaking plainly with him or negotiating his terms. 

If he could--if he was granted passage to that place in every living creature where the heart unspools itself in the bearer’s hands--the Mandalorian considers what he hopes to hear. 

Fear and desperation, to start--because no creature who feels unmistakeable in existence is one worth trusting.

Hope, certainly.

And a recollection--however vague or distant--of a warmth among others, of cool water pressed to his lips, of warmth drawn about his small form, of _comfort_ given in great and varying heaps. 

He supposes his ideal is this: they find the child's home planet. It is heady and wet and warm, just the kind of place to keep its people small and green. It is lush with plant life, and under its canopy are these same strange creatures with cultures and laws, thriving in a self-established society. They are not ignorant of the worlds beyond their own, but happy, nonetheless, to stand apart. 

From a distance, the Mandalorian will watch them, ensuring their ways are peaceful and the child faces no more danger here than he would anyplace else. Introductions will be made. An agreement will be met, and lines of communication established. The Mandalorian will not leave without every assurance the child will not again be stolen by cruel forces and dark fates. 

The Mandalorian does see himself leaving, or at least--sees himself disappearing into the edges of the child's blossoming life. He wants for this being what was stolen from him: the chance to grow with more choices than diminished circumstances allow. He wants this tiny refugee to return home, wants _that_ to become his storied start: traversing the galaxy with friends, outwitting enemies, and making a triumphant return. 

To that end, the Mandalorian wants their violent and brief time together to amount to distant memories and strange dreams. He wants these origins to be the kind of nightmare the child can recover from, and not as the Mandalorian knows his own: a persistent rumble in the earth, smoke clouding lungs, blood as a warm mist in the air. 

Even at fifty, the child is impossibly young. His youth can restart; it needn’t end with canonfire. 

Though he says none of this aloud, the Mandalorian gets the distinct feeling he is being eavesdropped on, and perhaps worse--seen. He glances about the cockpit to be sure, but the only prying eyes are here, so he scrutinizes the child, perhaps more now than he’s ever done, to the child’s great fortune and his own detriment. 

If before he wasn’t sure the child’s eyes were capable of anything but curiosity and wonderment, he knows better now: there is sympathy there, swirling in those glossy black depths. 

"My clan is diminished," he says to himself, thinking heavy-heartedly of those he'd trained with, those who had risked their own safety and secrecy to come to his aid. Their emptied--but mostly unscathed--armor suggests their organic matter was vaporized, a fact that ruthlessly undercuts the purpose and pride inseparable from the Beskar armor a Mandalorian earns throughout their life. These warriors did not fight to their deaths; their covert was uncovered, and they were ambushed. They likely burned in the very place they’d established to protect themselves. 

To the child, he says, "Long live the clan." 

It is both declaration and realization held in one breath.

The Mandalorian cannot now assume that most radical solution: there will be no removing his helmet and walking naked into an unknown life. That distant, eerie dream is undone now in its entirety. Because there is no covert to protect him or carry his lie, he alone may be what is left of their proud tribe. It is his responsibility to survive, to wear his signet and exist in a world that would sooner eradicate his kind, then make up stories only to forget their truths.

Like the care and protection of the child, this too is his cause: to exist--not faceless, but with the full bearing of his creed. The armor, the path, the Way--none of it changes. All of it fortifies. 

Consumption, he supposes by the tightness in his chest, is a freedom in its own right. 

He cannot name the feeling as either relief or disappointment; it is altogether a great many things, neither preferred or not, only true. 

He will be this, live through the armor, and derive purpose from the child in his care. He will battle and scrounge for its best life. He imagines it less like his own, and still more like Sargon, its green memories still warm and vibrant in his mind. The child should grow and thrive in a peaceful world--his own, or one adopted to his tastes. It is the Mandalorian's will that this should be done. 

He lets the ship continue along an empty path, and abandons the console purposefully. 

He removes a glove--this much, he thinks, is allowed--and with his naked hand, touches the child’s ear. A knuckle is split, and two fingernails are blackened where blood has settled between flesh and nail. His palm is calloused, but his touch is careful. He takes the green appendage between his thumb and forefinger, like he’d seen done by Karga, Dune, and IG-11 in parting. By its very nature, it is merely a gesture, a simple impulse to reach out and touch that which is new in a world that feels so tired and old. 

But it is _more than that,_ in much the way the child is more than he appears. It is a great, grand, ghostly exchange. Like meeting death and shaking its hand, the Mandalorian does not want to turn his back. 

The child, for his own, is oblivious to this conclusion. He coos delightedly and opens his mouth wide in the approximation of a smile. At once, the Mandalorian forgets his unsettled nerves, forgets what he has been told about wizards, forgets--even--the fantastical ruin he’s seen with his own eyes.

Because the child’s skin is warm, the sparse hair wiry rather than soft. He feels strangely suited for the galaxy, even for being parted from his world. He is both delicate the way new things are, and formidable, like unchallenged children assume themselves to be.

The Mandalorian continues to stroke the child’s ear, and watches as the creature’s eyes squint to a close. He is wholly at peace like this: in the blackest depths of space, reunited with his protector. 

_You will be as its father._

If the child understood any of what the Armorer decreed, it was that. 

He is a child before all else: prize, bounty, wizard, enemy, ally. 

Tangentially, he is a foundling.

From the shared heart of their tiny clan, the child is a son. 

It does not hit him until they're well outside that world's airspace--past the Nevarro’s neighboring two planets and smattering of moons, even. He isn't mauled by feelings on the outset, ever. He has too much patience and practice for that. 

He’s secure at his console, considering the next nearest outpost after dismissing the previous two, when the Beskar armor upon his person does an early runthrough of its final task: it holds him together amidst falling completely apart. 

Silently, the Mandalorian begins to weep. 

He cannot help himself.

The madness of the past few months, the horror of today--everything has conspired to tear into his heart, dig out the meat, and leave it empty and without function. 

He weeps but does not sob, nor does his body quake for the effort. It seems to understand the command, but stall upon execution. 

He does all this softly, and for a long time. 

It is no grand production: his breathing is mostly measured, his chest is not pounding like it had when his body began to answer death's call. And as ever, his helmet conceals the worst of it. In the modicum of space between skin and steel, tears streak through the blood and sweat caked across his features. 

He should be relieved: there are no longer any impossible choices for him to make. The Armorer has tasked him with a clan to protect, and orders enough to serve as parameters. The tracking beacon is gone. The child is as free as is possible, for twice being stolen. 

What he grieves are the losses--the Mandalorians, and indeed, himself. His absent self. The name shouted down at him from battle lines. The way Moff Gideon identified him not as a Mandalorian, but as a little boy.

_Din Djarin._

He’s decades too late to cry those tears, but the pain is finally meeting him; he feels it like a flame in his chest, smoke rising up his throat. He's sorry for the destruction of his life and his home, for those who named and loved him to have lost their lives so brutally, and for their son to have chosen much the same. 

The wind at his back that necessitates forwardness has nothing to do with the Mandalorian creed; it’s an artificial force. A canon’s blast.

Lastly, he grieves for the child, who needs more than the Mandalorian was able to ever keep for himself, and so again he is afraid of outright, cataclysmic failure. 

This child-- _his child_ \--is older than the Mandalorian thinks he'll ever be. 

The Mandalorian speaks--not when he is ready, but well before, because the action forces him to contain his sorrow. 

In slow, precise language, he explains his own existence. He speaks dead ahead, out towards the galaxy, but the only ears poised to hear him are green and spanned out to an impressive display. The Mandalorian speaks as to how he was helped to survive, how he hopes to help the child in turn. 

“Because that’s what she meant when she said,” he swallows, finishes, “We’re a clan.”

He clears his throat and again sets about his controls, searching for their next point of contact. Despite all that has happened, he’s worried that their situation has not changed, that he’ll need to take jobs to keep them in fuel enough to keep moving. 

It seems, even if the child cannot read his mind, maybe Greef Karga has a knack for it.

_“Mando!”_

He’s being hailed--which is to say, Karga hasn’t sent him a message the Mandalorian can choose to listen to or ignore; he means for them to speak.

“Miss me already?” Karga asks as the Mandalorian allows the transmission through. 

Karga fills the Mandalorian’s silence with his own laughter. 

“Check your credits,” he says. “I’ll wait.” 

He doesn’t, actually. He continues: “Not a down payment on future exploits, I assure you. A gift, actually. A contribution from an anonymous donor.” 

The Mandalorian commands a holo-view of his credits, and the increase is substantial. He searches through the history, noting two large--and recent--transfers.

“Anonymous?” 

“W _ell,”_ Karga’s tone is one the Mandalorian knows well: he’s oscillating between what is true and what sounds as good as. “She didn’t remove her helmet.” 

_Of course,_ the Mandalorian thinks. The Armorer lives her physical life in the underground covert, and as such has a certain vantage point. She understands the galaxy in a way few choose: by viewing its waste. There’s money in what’s thrown away; most people don’t know the value of things, not really. In worlds that share space travel as well as slavery, worth is a tenuous thing. 

As the Mandalorian is thinking, Greef Karga is--as is ever the case--still talking. 

“There’s also some backpay, I’ve… perhaps owed you.” 

“Did Cara Dune break your books that fast?”

Karga scoffs, then just as well explains she got him loose enough to spill his schemes herself: “We’ve had a few libations to celebrate being alive and being on Nevarro!”

“Thanks, Greef.” 

And, because she’s probably standing behind him with a blaster, “Thanks, Cara.” 

It's a good start. He can breath easy for the time being, and be more discerning should any opportunities arise. 

His thoughts don't end there as they usually would, accounting for practicalities only. He is drawn again towards sentimentality, and the fact that he may have a broader clan than even the Armorer knows. Or perhaps, she knew all too well from their meeting in the tunnels, but meant to spare him the embarrassment of including this ragtag cadre of fighters as family.

The Mandalorian can’t help but think of Kuiil in this moment, and how he and the Armorer--both incredibly knowledgeable in their arts, both wildly particular about how their expertise is received and understood--might have been fast friends. 

In another life. 

They fly. He pilots a path in search of a planet he doesn't know, with a creature who cannot illuminate the way. 

He stalls, stops, considers that what they need before a victory is a plan, and to that end, sets a new course. 

-

In a veritable den of scum and villainy, the Mandalorian breaks an Arcona’s arm when the alien tries to swipe his helmet off. It’s only a brief interlude between landing and collecting what he came for: a map. 

They round a few more outposts, collecting several more. 

That his ship's navigation systems are old proves both a blessing and a curse: his movements are largely undetectable by Imperial forces, but latest data sets outlining newly established trade routes or territories are intelligible. He ends up searching for copies of copies, things that have what he's looking to see, but don’t afford the Empire reciprocal access. _He mustn’t be seen seeing these things._

Once satisfied with his collection, the Mandalorian and child double back to a planet they'd passed. From his systems, it looks dark, almost black. If life has established itself on this planet, it'll have done so in another hemisphere. 

Upon encroaching very near its atmosphere, the Mandalorian sees its true self: green.

-

They land somewhere quiet, amid dark forests of tall trees that bend their spindly branches to allow the Mandalorian into a clearing rather than see themselves snapped under his ship. Sentient, in a way. Perpetually wary and therefore built for this world. 

The night is warm, and given the fauna’s apparent consciousness, the Mandalorian does not risk starting a fire. 

He walks a generous circumference, clocks no threats other than what he determines to be a native beast--hog-like, but skittish. He thinks about hunting one, drying its flesh in strips. He imagines the child could gnaw happily on that for some time. He'll keep the bones and make-- _learn to make_ \--a broth.

All of it can wait until morning, he decides. 

He is exhausted by all he’s seen and done. One night’s rest won’t undo a lick of it, but it’ll get him to the next day. It’ll allow him to remember again.

The Mandalorian lays down a pallet on the soft earth--the child’s blanket atop his own--and settles himself and the child down for a quiet night under the stars. He provides a makeshift meal to the child while he assesses his maps. 

He expects--

Well.

He isn’t _surprised_ by the child’s immediate presence, tucked in at his side. 

But the Mandalorian does not yet grant himself such free reign fanciful thoughts as these: that they should have peaceful evenings like this from time to time, that there can be quiet between them he doesn’t immediately fill with wondering, that the child may seek out this proximity for no more complex reason than adoration. In theory, the Mandalorian can entertain the various notions. Practice will bear itself out. 

To that end, the Mandalorian gives an affirming grunt and makes room. He holds the bowl of berries he’s prepared while the child gets comfortable.

Only one fits in the child’s tiny clawed hand, but he eats fitfully. The pink and red fruits burst juicily and delight the child. Rivers of blue drain from the corners of his mouth and color his toothy little smile.

(The Mandalorian again considers what a boon the hog would make--dried meats and bone broth for weeks.)

“Comfortable?”

The child doesn’t answer him, except to continue smacking his lips against the alternating sweet and tartness of the berries.

After worrying the pieces by hand, the Mandalorian takes in his efforts by throwing holographic projections of the maps against the outer hull of his ship. In bright blues and whites, the galaxy is made. The more particular naming conventions of various planets are territories may be lost in Galactic Basic, but the expansive picture is no less marvelous. He and the child take in this vision of the galaxy, its many depths and reaches. It is incomplete, but in no way lacking. 

There is a vastness the Mandalorian cannot quite fathom, even for spending his adult life in its blackened grip.

Stars and planets are tracked; even debris held between the gravitational pulls of twin moons is marked, though much of the galaxy is subject to change. The Empire may have destroyed entire planets with the Death Star, but they’ve done much the same without it: Storm Troops and AT-ATs leveled cities, decimated populations. To slaughter even swathes of a populace burns into the shared heart of the rest; all that’s left standing still bleeds for what is stolen.

The Mandalorian swallows hard, then bites his tongue to reconcentrate the pain in his heart, manifesting it as something physical, and therefore tenable. 

He looks to the child again, finding that doing so dulls the hurt from which he is so quick to draw strength and purpose. That well--once bottomless--bears the tight, bright echo of shallow waters. The Mandalorian feels as though one day soon, he will step into that place and tear through its papered walls and out the other side. 

Instead, he is slowly coming around to this new source for his own deliverance. 

“Anything look familiar?”

He asks this dully. Like most of what he says, he doesn’t expect an answer, though he’s starting to intimate a response. He studies the child’s face as the projections bathe his buggish features in eerie blue hues. If all beings--himself included--are aliens, this child is moreso. He looks at once aged, but with eyes that are bright and new, welling with a wonder that is sincere and innocent. He is searching, too.

Above them, the Mandalorian notices the trees have curled inwards. It is a protective gesture, each layering over the other, latticing a perfect pattern as they drift to sleep. 

The night sky is gone, replaced by the green-black cover. The darkness surrounding them is inescapable, and beautiful in its completeness. 

The only light stirs from the artificial stars in their own private galaxy. To look upon it affirms that one, essential question: are they more lost for looking aimlessly, or all at once?

Because he’s never known a being like this one--rarity is itself a rarity, given his line of work, and criminality does not favor a genus or species; it is as common as stardust--the Mandalorian considers, then, the _other_ mysterious kind this child is party to: the enemy wizards capable of great feats of force, absent any physical will. There are stories told far and wide enough that even Kuiil had some vague recollection of their deeds, which is more to go on than the hunter has had for some bounties. 

It’s not a fob with a blinking red light, but it’s something.

Admittedly, the Mandalorian isn't cheered by the prospect of tracking down a fairytale, or asking after it only to _hope_ to encounter those staunchest believers and zealots. But it's his best bet: rather than search the galaxy for that one planet, the Mandalorian decides to listen for these fanciful things and suss out that kernel of truth from which they grow. Anyone who knows a wondrous story even half as bizarre as the child's will surely fall over themselves to tell it. 

He can't deny what he's already been told sounds no different than the proclamations of drunken fools in the cantina.

That’s as good a place as any to start.

He turns--perhaps to share this information (“How do you feel about a pub crawl?”), perhaps to gauge the idea’s merit by that same vein--but finds the child asleep. 

His bowl is empty, his tiny juice-stained hands now full of the Mandalorian’s cloak. His brilliant bright eyes are closed to the world that holds them. 

Despite everything, he is at infinite, incontestable peace. 

The Mandalorian lets the holographic projections fade from view. Planets fizzle and burn out like so many white-gold stars. 

They’ll get to them all in due time.

**Author's Note:**

> *I love the western vibes this show gives, which of course gets me thinking of Deadwood. "Fucked my up life flatter than hammered shit" is an Ellsworth line.


End file.
